This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) of prior U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/807,518, filed Apr. 2, 2013, which is incorporated in its entirety by reference herein.
The present invention relates to proppants and the evaluation of properties of proppants. The present invention further relates to classifying proppants based on one or more properties that can be measured and further relates to methods to select proppants and design proppants based on certain properties.
In the past, to evaluate properties of proppants, metrics such as the specific gravity (sg), percent of crush fines generated at a specific pressure, sphericity, roundness, and/or actual conductivity were utilized to attempt to understand what the functional performance of a proppant may be relative to another proppant. However, while one or more of these metrics were useful in better understanding the proppant and its performance in a subterranean formation, it was discovered that these metrics alone would still not accurately predict which proppant would perform better over other proppants especially with respect to functional performance in a subterranean formation.
Accordingly, there is a need in the industry to devise additional evaluation techniques in order to better understand and predict proppant performance in subterranean formations other than the specific metrics mentioned above.